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Eleventh hour historical bounty

A FINAL minute excavation team unearthed a second Nyah school time capsule last Saturday, despite a 12 month search to find.

Organisers of the Nyah District Primary School centenary celebrations were about to unveil the time capsule dug into the school’s grounds in Nyah West 30 years ago when they received a surprise announcement.

They had known for the past 12 months that a second time capsule was buried in the grounds of the former Nyah Primary School — which merged with the Nyah West school to form Nyah District Primary in 1997 — but didn’t know where to locate it.

At 2pm on Saturday, half an hour before digging up the known time capsule, a group of old Nyah Primary School students walked into the school carrying an old pipe.

“That was pretty, pretty exciting,” recalled Meg Irvin, author of the school’s history book.

“As we were undoing our Nyah West capsule, the boys had just found the Nyah capsule and they brought it across, still dripping with mud and water as they’d washed it off from the lump of concrete they dug it out of, and we opened up both capsules.

“We spent months trying to find this wretched thing and it was just wonderful.”

According to Vinifera resident Carol Sutton, it was a combined effort between a group of former students from the Sutton, Gilbert and Simpson families, led by Julian Gilbert.

For more on this story, grab a copy of Friday’s Guardian (November 27).

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